Sailor V is Dead
by Netherwood
Summary: The greatest trial of Sailor V, Minako Aino, begins in a darkened London warehouse. It will only end months and months later, in the arms of her princess and surrounded by her friends. One-shot.


_Disclaimer: Sailor Moon and her friends do not belong to me. I'm only playing, and will put them back when I'm done._

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**Sailor V is Dead**

**by Netherwood**

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Sirens scream through the night as the rising flames and the column of smoke reach up to throttle the storm clouds. Sailor V stumbles through the alleys, eyes stinging, body shouting in protest, uniform ripped and her sodden trail of hair whipping behind her. When the coughing subsides and her head stops swimming, she dashes up a wall to the roof of an old department store, her gloved hands and heeled feet finding holds in the bricks that no mere human could grasp.

She collapses under the broad piping of an air conditioning unit. The distant light of the inferno flickers at her hiding place, and Sailor V presses herself into the shadows. The sound of her panting is drowned out by the raindrops hitting the sheet metal of her scant shelter.

"V? Sailor V, come in! Mina, answer your bloody communicator!"

Artemis's voice forces her to alertness, and she fumbles for her transformation pen's communicator function. She wonders once again, briefly, how a cat can use a communicator, even one as clever as Artemis. "Hey Artie, do you ever chase a rabbit into a hole and think, oh wow, this pit just keeps on going down! Something like that?"

(When she was eight, Minako played the lead in her grade school production of _Alice in Wonderland_. She arranged tea parties with her household of stuffed animals so she could properly rehearse her lines. It was the same as her usual daily activities, except now she was also rehearsing lines. Her parents were driven to exasperation when the Alice play gave her a habit of gleefully butchering aphorisms into blended liver. They thought she would stop once the play was over, but she kept doing it right until the aftermath of Danburite, when she killed the man or monster whom she thought she loved. London was teaching her to play with words again, but right now, as she lies on a rooftop shuddering with chill and wet and battle jitters and pain, she is about to lose that half of her soul again. It will be lost until Usagi pulls back the shadow.)

"What are you going on about? Mina, have you hit your head? Why in the name of the Moon are there sirens out there?"

"And... and you keep following that little white rabbit down the hole, and it starts to get narrower a little bit at a time until the walls of the tunnel start squeezing your hips. Then you're like, I'm stuck! This little furball diets more than I do!" She can't stop a rickety little giggle from slipping out.

"Mina…" He isn't sure whether he needs to be worried or slap some sense into her. Over the communicator. Somehow. She can hear it in his voice.

Mina swallows, fights back tears. (Sailor V is glamorous and ought to smile.) "Artie, it was a trap! They knew Katarina and me were coming. The whole thing was a setup." She wants to keep talking, about the warehouse, about the shadow at the other end, about the tink - tink - tink of metal as something bounced over the cement, about the drums of gasoline where she expected boxes of drugs tainted by Dark Kingdom magic. She wants to pull it all from her chest and cough it out, but Artemis starts talking before she can get her throat under control again.

"Retreat and fall back to your apartment then, we'll meet up there. You can get there alright, can't you?"

"No!" She blurts it out. "I mean, yes I can get go through alleys just fine, and I bet I could roofjump it with a little rest if I need to, but we can't meet there."

"Well why not?"

"Artie, _it was a trap!"_ She isn't making sense and she knows it, but her head is still spinning with the ring of the grenade, the force of the explosion, and the sight of Katarina and Alan clinging to each other, comforting themselves over her "death," but also kissing, desperately and passionately and familiarly like this is hardly the first time and they never _told_ her.

(For her first six months working as Sailor V in Tokyo, she watched the life of Minako Aino crumble to pieces. She stopped playing volleyball, she stopped going to the Crown Arcade, she stopped keeping track of what shows everyone was watching and who was dating who. She started hearing people whisper about how she was ditching class and hardly saw anyone outside school. She heard them talking about her limps and bandages and cut lips and scratches, because makeup can't hide everything all the time. She couldn't hide the wounds from her parents, either, and could only say she tripped into a bush so many times, so she tried not to be seen at home on days when Sailor V's mission left its mark on Minako's body. Thank Aphrodite that Sailors heal fast.

And then she came to London, and met Katarina and Alan. She didn't need to know what everyone was watching, because Alan would take her to movies anytime she asked. She didn't need to know the whole town, because Katarina would show her the best fish and chips shops and the best cafes to have a slow cup of coffee or tea. Katarina and Alan didn't ask where she got the bruises and cuts or where she disappeared to in the middle of a picnic or a baseball game. Half the time when she had to run, Katarina was right behind her anyway.)

Somehow she fights back the tears and loosens her throat enough to talk again. "Katarina was complete zip lips about this sting. Just me and her, we were the only ones in on it. But they knew we were coming anyway!"

"You think Katarina set you up? Why? Why would she possibly do that to you?"

"_Might_ have. Could have. And why was Alan there when it happened? Right after the trap sprung he came prancing up to Katarina and—" She stops, clenches her fists, and takes a shuddering breath. "He didn't know about the sting, he has no reason to be in the docks, not this time of night or at all."

(She remembers clinging to so-gorgeous Alan's arm, giggling playfully. She remembers Katarina's smile as the woman who was like her sister put her hands on Minako's cheeks and pulled her close after a bad fight with the human thralls of the Dark Kingdom. Mina remembers, and hates herself for even suspecting them. But Sailor V must think of every angle, because there is a Mission.)

She forces down a whimper and curls up on herself, rough concrete roof scraping at her skin as she does. "So... either of them, or, or... they were being shadowed by the Dark Kingdom maybe, or _something_, but you see, Artie? There's a leak somewhere. Maybe Alan, or maybe Katarina, or maybe someone else completely just to spin my head around for giggles, but there's a leak somewhere."

"And that means the Dark Kingdom might know Sailor V's cover identity and where you sleep. Lovely. Just— Lovely."

(She doesn't reply, but the little girl locked inside her head wants to yell at Artemis for saying, even unthinkingly, that Minako Aino is the cover, the disguise, the mask, and Sailor V is the truth. But loves and hurts and crushes and fears don't matter in the face of life and death, so Sailor V keeps the little girl locked up.)

After a moment, Artemis speaks again. "Mina? Do you have a plan?"

The first thing that goes through her head is "You can be my canary and find that leak, fuzzbutt!" but the light, flippant words get stuck in her throat. She tries again, and manages to talk this time. "Follow them, Artemis. Shadow Katarina and Alan until you find our info leak. And then? Then you trace it back to the source."

(How furious Minako was when Artemis insisted on hiding his existence from them. He never let Katarina and Alan see him, not even pretending to be a normal cat. How furious Artemis was when Minako insisted on revealing her secret identity to them. Now is not the time for apologies or I-told-you-so. Now, Sailor V is just happy she has one more Ace, one more dagger to wield from the shadows.)

"..and if that works, it leads us right to the Dark Kingdom's root in London," Artemis says, considering it.

"We might finally exterminate the last of the bastards."

"With a bit of luck, this could be the break we need. Good. I'll get on them." A silence. "What about you, though? What will you do?"

Sailor V uncurls and rolls out from her shelter. Her eyes still sting from smoke and tears, her body still aches from wounds, the rain still comes down around her, but she stands and rolls her neck. "Silly Artie. I'm dead, remember? So I'll hide. Maybe they're looking for me, or maybe they got this weird idea that blowing up a warehouse on me will kill me off. Either way, I just have to disappear and let our watchers think I'm dead until you tell me where to strike. Don't want to spoil their surprise, after all!"

OoOoO

She disappears.

The cover story she fed her parents about studying abroad in London was only that, a cover story upheld by Artemis's oddly far-reaching resources, so there is no school that notices Minako Aino go missing. Her apartment was rented in cash from a sour fellow who asked no questions, so no one raises an alarm there. Alan and Katarina are the only only ones who know, and they do not explain to the world that Minako Aino died in a warehouse bombing, so she simply disappears.

She does not go back to her apartment for clothes or food or money in case it is watched. She does not use the credit cards or bank accounts Artemis prepared for her, because she has spent months working and shopping and playing with an agent of a special police task force who may now be an enemy, and the accounts might be watched.

The magical disguises of the Venus compact are her saving grace. An old homeless man stays at a shelter for a free meal and a warm place to rest. A cheerful, laughing high school girl with elegantly long green hair entices a lonely salaryman into a date, and is skillful enough to get away with a stack of bills in return for nothing more than teasing. A dark-skinned foreigner rents a cheap hotel room later the same day with that same money. A small army of children, middle-aged adults, and others who shoplift a bag of chips here and a bottle of water there, only to disappear as soon as they turn the corner.

(She does not and will never suffer a guilty conscience for the minor crimes that fed her for two weeks. Being a Sailor means you can't do any good unless you survive to kill the baddies.)

The charge on her compact is not infinite, though, so when she isn't scouting for likely Dark Kingdom bases or shoplifting food or cheating old salarymen out of their money or trying to shake off the stalkers who might suspect her identity (or maybe the few desperate-looking people breathing heavily and staggering down alleys after her aren't youma or Dark Kingdom thralls, maybe this is just what life is like in the cold and dark), she stays in shadows and dresses in an old heavy coat she got at a shelter and rubs dirt in her hair to hide its radiant gleam that normally pulls everyone's eye.

(She can survive two weeks of being dirty and sleeping mostly outdoors, even though the coat isn't warm enough. She tells herself she's camping, which she hates but can suffer through anyway. Dirty and cold are unpleasant, but the goddess of love, beauty, and war has suffered far worse. But she cannot stand being alone, without even Artemis to watch her back. For months afterward she will watch everyone on any street she walks down, wondering if they're going to attack her back as soon as she passes them. For months, she will be unable to fall asleep alone; she will need Artemis or her parents in the room until she drifts off. For years she will sometimes be just on the edge of sleep and suddenly jolt into full wakefulness, heart hammering, panic crashing in from nowhere and screaming that if she falls asleep, they might find her and kill her while she is defenseless. That is how she feels every time she is exhausted enough to sleep in these two weeks in the shadows.

It will be years before she tells Usagi the full story of London. And yet, somehow, Usagi will know. Not the specifics, but she will know that Minako is hurt.

One day, after Katarina comes to Tokyo under Kunzite's sway but before Usagi takes Mina in her arms, Usagi will ask her to come to the Crown Cafe. Mina will arrive first and take a corner seat with her back to the wall, so she can watch the customers in the store and the passersby on the street. She will watch little kids with ice creams, and a gaggle of boys demolishing a whole plate of fries before heading down to the arcade, and salarymen wandering by outside, and she will wonder if any of them are carrying a grenade.

Mina will keep a smile on her face, eyes carefully bright and wide and facial muscles relaxed. It will be automatic by then. She will just be a teenage girl spending her Friday afternoon savoring an oreo milkshake while waiting for her friend. Just a normal teenage girl. She will look like one, but she will have to remember to look like one. It wasn't always an act.

"Minako! V!"

She will jump out of her seat, startled, before her brain tags the voice with its identity and she changes the motion into raising a hand to greet Usagi. Usagi will not say anything about it, but will bound over to Mina's table with her golden twintails streaming behind her. "Hey Mina, what's up? Ooh, that shake looks so nummy!"

Mina will keep her smile in place and nod. "I'm here like you asked, princess. What do you want to talk about?"

Usagi will giggle. "Nuh-uh, not yet, nom noms come first! I want a shake too!" And she will dash to the counter, opening her purse as she goes. She'll stop to flirt with Motoki for a minute before returning, bearing aloft a tall vanilla sundae with strawberries, banana halves wedged down its side, streams of caramel and hot fudge crisscrossing it, and peanut butter chocolate chips scattered liberally over the whole thing. Usagi will grin beatifically as she digs in, and Minako won't be able to help but giggle just a bit at her princess's gusto.

Usagi will look up, mouth full and a smudge of chocolate on one cheek. "Ah? Whassho funneh?"

Mina will laugh and wave the question away. "No, no, don't worry about it. Not even a little bit, I've already forgotten! Now, you wanted to talk about something?" The phrase "eat, drink, and be merry; that's how we scrape by" will pop into her mind as she watches Usagi wipe the chocolate off her cheek, but the words will not quite force their way out her mouth.

Usagi will continue her assault on the ice cream, but at a much more sedate pace that lets her talk. "Mina, I'm kinda worried about you."

"Why? What do you mean?"

"I know you need a little more room than most of us, so I try not to dogpile you with all the girls, and I don't want to rush you, but..." Usagi's hand will move halfway across the table, before pulling back. "I just feel like we're all sitting together at Rei's place or we're all getting ice cream here or whatever we're doing, and you're the only one who isn't in the room. It's like you... go somewhere else unless we're doing Sailor stuff. I know I can't rush you, but I feel like I should be doing more to make a place for you."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about me! After going solo in Tokyo for so long and ending up in London later, I think... I think I'm just used to working on my own."

"But you don't _have_ to be, and I know you don't want to, either!" Usagi will pout. "Me and Rei were lovefighting less than an hour after we met. And you know that light Ami gets in her eyes when she's happy? She used to only do that when her nose was in a book, but now she gets it all the time when she's with us. And even with Mako, everyone thought she's big and scary, but she just needed someone to share her yummy lunches with! I really, really don't want to push in where I shouldn't, but this..." Usagi will lift her hand again, and this time boldly bring it all the way up to Mina's face, trailing fingers along her cheek. "...this is your mask, V. Your face is stuck behind it somewhere. Let me help you get out again?"

Mina will shudder with a chill and realize then that Usagi _knows_—not the specifics, other than half the story about Katarina and a stolen love, but she can see how deep the wounds go. Mina will think about school children who almost certainly aren't carrying grenades—but might be—and she'll think about jolting awake and looking around to see her army of plush toys lining the walls of her pink little girl's bedroom even when she half-expects a grimy wall in the London Underground. She will think about two weeks where she never felt safe for even a second, and she will think about over a year and a half of hiding and fighting and losing friends and drifting apart from family and killing monsters who said they loved her. She will think of all this, and her heart will stick in her throat, and she will not know what to say. "Usagi, I'm supposed to be _your _bodyguard!" She will fix that cracked smile in place. "I should worry about you, not the other way around!"

"Minaaa!" Usagi will pout and slap her open palm to the table in mock (?) anger. "That's exactly what I'm talking about! You're doing it again! Raagh!" And they will laugh it off, the corpse of the near-miss, and they will finish their ice cream and head down to the arcade to have fun racing and fighting and blowing up aliens, and Mina will be unreachable again.)

OoOoO

Two weeks after the grenade and the night of flame, Artemis sends her the location of the Dark Kingdom's base of London operations. They know Sailor V's six-month crusade in this dark city has left barely a few desperate Dark Kingdom soldiers alive and only one lieutenant strong enough to create new youma; Artemis insists on scouting the site first to make sure their primary target is there. All they need to do is sever the head, the underlings die too but mainly the lieutenant, and London's long siege will come to an end. Mina does not ask about Alan and Katarina, because Minako will have to wait and Sailor V doesn't need to know unless Artemis deems it mission-relevant. Artemis waits to see if she asks, but he does not volunteer the information. He only tells her the location, tells her to wait while he scouts, and then signals her when it's time to go to work.

The final base of operations is a warehouse, though a few kilometers down the shore from the one the Dark Kingdom burned around her. (Sailor V's greatest trial began in a warehouse with a grenade, so it would be nicely symmetrical to say that it also ends in a warehouse. But even though this is the last London operation, Sailor V's greatest trial will continue until Mina is in Usagi's arms, long after she takes up the mantle of Sailor Venus.)

Mina's nerves are stretched taut, but she approaches the assault unemotionally. Just another mission, just another set of monsters, just another night of work.

(She used to laugh and mock the nightmares-made-flesh and dance about the battlefield in the very beginning, half because she was irrepressible and half to cover the shaking of her hands. That changed after Danburite, the monster who said he loved her and cursed her with his dying breath to be forever kept from love by the chains of duty. She loved him in the manner of a summer storm that crashes in from nowhere and disappears to the same, leaving only a changed landscape. She also killed him.)

(She will laugh and mock and dance about the battlefield again, but not yet.)

She breaks in through the highest windows and lands on a walkway suspended from the ceiling. The first target she sees is on the other end of the walkway, wiry and furred like a green orangutan, bent over a control box. Sailor V snaps her compact toward it almost before landing and immediately begins gathering brilliant golden energy at the tip of her outstretched finger; the youma barely has time to jerk up toward the sound of shattering glass before the Crescent Boomerang slices through its neck. The body slumps and the head drops toward the floor, but Sailor V is already finding her next target.

An enormous sphere of blue-white energy swirls at the center of the room just above the floor, nearly twice as tall as the few humanoid figures standing around it. Sailor V quirks a smirk at the choppy, unsettled waves rippling across the sphere's surface as she recognizes it for what it is: the energy the Dark Kingdom drained from London, or at least a decent chunk of it. Even better, one of the figures standing around the bounty of stolen energy is a woman with a mane of fiery red hair and and the dark gray militant uniform of the ranking leaders of the Dark Kingdom. Sailor V doesn't stop to wonder whether the energy is still here because the Dark Kingdom had plans for it or was having difficulties transporting it back home; she just forces as much power as she can into the light charging at her fingertip and launches it straight at the unstable-looking sphere.

The brilliant lance of her Crescent Beam punches straight through the roiling energy with a sound like shattering crystal and the sphere's light darkens like a sun instantly consumed in storm clouds. The enemy gathered around it turn toward her in shock, dropping into guard positions, except for one—the lieutenant—who has better instincts and dives and scrambles away. Two heartbeats later, the sphere of floating energy erupts. Light and thunder blast out. The noise swallows Sailor V's little cackle, and the force rips over the idiots who were still standing by the thing.

Sailor V charges more Crescent Beams and wordlessly blasts them down at the lieutenant, who rolls and weaves and jukes desperately, unable to find space to climb back to her feet but somehow staying just ahead of the retribution striking potholes in the floor all around her.

"V, look out! Below you, on the left!" Artemis shouts it from his hiding place somewhere in the building, out of harm's way. Mina looks in time to see a survivor struggling to his feet, a youma with hideous burns across his blue skin. It's not surprising he survived the explosion, though. He's built like a tank and half again as tall as a normal human and three times as thick, rippling with knotted muscles and snarling around boar tusks. The youma grabs a crate and hefts it like it's nothing. Sailor V really doesn't like how the crate's probably fifty times her weight, so she drops over the edge of the railing at the same time he throws it at her sniper position. She whirls gracefully through the air as the crate rips the walkway from the ceiling with an angry screech of metal, and lands elegantly as the wreckage keeps soaring through the air. As it breaks against the wall with an unholy metal clamor, Mina puts a Crescent Beam right between the giant youma's eyes. It falls, already dead and crumbling before it understands.

Maybe the lieutenant has some guts, or maybe she just expects to get shot in the back if she runs. Either way, she comes hurtling at Sailor V with a snarl and a long dagger made of glinting yellow crystal. She's vicious, but her charge is wild and undisciplined. She's fast, but not as fast as Sailor V, and nowhere near as skilled. Sailor V dips under a wild swing and puts a hard rising kick right under her opponent's chin, stunning the lieutenant and throwing her back. She doesn't recover from the blow quick enough to even see the compact Crescent Boomerang that strikes her throat point blank, ending her life.

The entire battle took less than a minute, and not a single word other than Artemis's warning. Sailor V keeps spinning in place, looking in shadows until Artemis abandons his cover and dashes over to her.

"Mina! You're okay!"

"Artie, did we get them all?"

"Yes, you cleared the building. That's the last, London should be youma-free now!"

Only then does Minako slump to the ground, letting her feet slide away beneath her until she sits like her puppet strings all snapped at once. "They're... dead? The bastards are all dead?"

Artemis only jumps up to her and licks her cheek, his tiny paws braced against her arm and his body trembling with worry.

Mina absently rubs his neck in return. "And what... What about... which of them?"

"Neither of them. They're both okay! The mole was a brainwashed agent in Katarina's office who tagged her and overheard the plan to raid that warehouse. You were right to hide, though, I think the mole may have known your identity. Alan was at the docks that night because his car broke down nearby. It was just a right stupid coincidence he showed up."

A wave of lightheadedness sweeps over Mina, and she has to steady herself with a hand against the floor to keep from falling over. "You know, out there for two weeks, I kept thinking, what if I have to come back and kill one of them to save the other from being seduced by a Dark Kingdom agent? Aha ha ha, oh, how many different ways would that suck? What if Alan or Katarina was the lieutenant running London operations? W-what if it was a-another Dan—Danburite? What if..." She rubs her eyes hard with the palm of her hands. "Nevermind. I... I shouldn't babble like this. I'm just tired."

She finally releases her Sailor V transformation, melting back into Minako Aino. Artemis's eyes go wide and his ears and whiskers droop when he sees what she's wearing, a loose tan overcoat that smells of cigarettes and has tears all up and down its cloth. A battered, oily green cap sits on her once-golden hair, which is filthy and tied into a braid that tucks down the back of her coat. Now that the glamour has faded, he can see the dark rings under eyes that can't stop jerking from shadow to shadow.

(She doesn't blame him for those two weeks, and she already forgave him long before London for showing up in her room with a pen, a compact, and a crackpot story about legendary warriors reincarnated from an ancient kingdom. Still, it will be years before he fully forgives himself, and then he only manages it because Minako Aino, the little girl locked up in Sailor V's head, didn't die.)

Artemis nuzzles her neck, purring. "Well, you needn't worry about such ghastly things any longer. They're both safe, they're both earnestly sorry for your supposed death, and they will both be very happy to see you alive and—"

"No."

Artemis stops his nuzzling and pulls back to look at her. "What?"

Minako takes a deep, shuddering breath. "She— they— don't need me. They'll be happier. They can love each other. If neither of them are Dark Kingdom, then it's safe to leave them together, and I— I don't..."

(Artemis wants to tell her not to abandon her friends. Artemis wants to tell her that running won't make the hurt go away, whatever's hurting her. Right now, Artemis isn't about to make her do anything she doesn't want to, so he says nothing.)

She fixes the smile in place. "Good thing I didn't have anything important in the apartment! And since Katarina isn't a spy watching our finances and accounts after all, we can use your money again. New clothes. And a hotel, a nice one! It's time we went back to Japan, isn't it? I can't show up at my parent's house looking like this. I miss being able to flirt in my native language too, even if British boys are nice. Maybe we'll find the other Sailors this time."

"Maybe," Artemis agrees, halfheartedly. He tries to nuzzle her further but she stands up, and all he can do is twist about her feet and rub at her ankles.

OoOoO

(It will be six months before she meets the other Sailors. Until then, her smile will get more and more automatic, the witticisms and twisted sayings will fail to force their way up her throat, and Artemis will think Minako Aino is truly dead. He will hate himself. Usagi will be kind and helpful and welcoming and give her space when she needs space and draw closer when Mina lets her. But Mina will think about grenades and waking up wanting to hide and the nightmares when she can actually get to sleep, and she will not know what to say to let Usagi in.

One day after a rough battle they will all be unwinding at Hikawa Shrine. "They" will have long since come to mean Usagi, Rei, Ami, Makoto, and Minako by default, with various cats depending on interest, even though Usagi will still think Mina is too far separated from the rest. On this day, they will supposedly be studying, but not too seriously because the crunch for high school entrance exams will still be far away. Rei and Usagi will bicker over manga ownership. Makoto will pass around her homemade peanut butter cookies. Ami will finally declare herself sick of reviewing English vocabulary, toss her study guide, break out a chessboard, and demolish each of them. After her turn getting mauled, Mina will distract herself flipping through a fashion magazine. She will like some of the outfits but hate the camera-ready smiles. She will keep reading, because everyone but Usagi is less likely to talk to her when she looks otherwise occupied.

Eventually, Usagi will get tired of having her armies brutalized by the steel mind and blades of the mercurial general and lean back from the chessboard with a groan and an alternative. "Hey hey, what about hamburgers? Anyone feel like Crown Cafe for burgers?"

Ami's eyes will go wide and she will also immediately forget about the game. "Oh, I wouldn't mind that at all!"

Rei, stretched out on the floor and kicking her legs as she thumbs through a manga, will snort in a most unladylike fashion. "We've been to the Crown four times this week alone, Usagi! Keep eating that much fast food and you won't fit your sailor fuku."

"Oi oi oi," Usagi will growl. "You weren't going on about diets when you were snarfing down a whole bucket of fries and two shakes the other day."

"Don't exaggerate so much, meatball-head. Besides," Rei says as she flips another page, "We were still under our weekly grease quota then. Now we're over. It makes perfect sense."

Ami will swing her head back and forth between the two, looking worried. "But, but, hamburgers!"

Makoto will look up from Ami's side of the kotatsu and the chessboard. "Rei's kinda right, it isn't exactly the best diet. Better to get some home cooking in, right Ami?"

Giving Usagi's hair a long look, Rei will cut in. "Have you ever thought about putting your twintails in braids?"

"Huh?" Usagi will blink a few times. "Where'd that come from?"

"Come here, will you?" Rei will mark her place and set down her manga, then languidly push herself across the floor to Usagi and start playing with her sunlight blonde hair. Minako's eyes will stray off the magazine she is pretending to read; the klutz and the miko's bickering and dancing is always so natural, so unrehearsed that she will wonder how they can stand to look at Mina's smile without punching her teeth in.

"Ah, home cooking, I… yes." Ami won't quite meet Makoto's eyes as she finally answers. "I suppose it depends on the recipes used, but average home meals are typically more nutritious than average fast food."

Makoto will be confused for a short second at Ami's reluctance, then put two and two together. "Oh, sorry, um, is your mom working late tonight?"

Ami will outright wince at that and smile wryly. "…that hardly need be asked. I… can cook well enough to get by, but I usually just heat something up or make a sandwich. Trying to cook for one person depresses me a bit." Then, realizing what she just said to an orphan, "Oh! Not that you—I didn't really mean—I'm sorry!"

Makoto will wave it off. "Nah, we both kinda wedged our feet in our mouth just now. Hey, if hamburgers don't happen tonight, how about you and me meet up for dinner? I'll cook!"

"Yes!" Ami will blush, embarrassed at her outburst, but not let go of the idea. "Um, your place or mine?" Mina will almost want to hug both of them as they blurt out everything so naturally, no matter the topic.

Usagi, her hair being forced into braids by Rei's firm hands, will watch the two with enormous puppy-dog eyes before looking over her shoulder to Rei. "But, but, hamburgers!"

Rei will just shrug. "Too late now, we can't get in the way of Ami and Makoto's dinner plans." She will start pushing her elbows into Usagi's back while still braiding, starting up a massage. Usagi will briefly look startled and flush before settling into the gentle pressure. "I guess we'll just have to lie around here and keep reading manga." Rei, the little minx, will have just a touch too much regret in her voice, and Minako will barely bite back a snicker.

Usagi's eyes will drift closed and her breathing slow as Rei keeps up the massage. She'll hum softly with pleasure like Luna purring at being rubbed, before she suddenly starts up and her eyes snap open. "Hey! You just don't want hamburgers because you don't feel like leaving! You just want to sit around your house and you're trying to be all food-righteous to hide it!"

Venus will suddenly snort, then burst into an outright cackle a touch more crazed than anything she's let out since joining the rest of the Sailors, who will stop what they're doing and look at her in surprise. Without her realizing it, a wide grin will break over her face. "Food-righteous! Yes! Food-Noah brings the ten culinary commandments!"

"Food-Moses."

Makoto will blink and look at Ami, wondering if she heard right. "What was that?"

"It was Food-Moses who brought the ten commandments to the Isra—" Ami will blush as her brain catches up with her mouth. "I mean, Moses! Just Moses!"

"Yes, it is Food-Moses who brings the commandments written on the stone breadboards." Venus lets out another laugh. "Makoto is your chef! You shall have no other chef before her!"

Ami, still blushing, will let out a happy little smile reflecting Minako's sunlight grin. "Thou shalt not steal Ami's hamburgers."

Makoto will consider. "Um... how 'bout, don't covet gourmet ingredients when you're shopping on a budget?"

Rei will drop Usagi's finished braids and puts her hands into the backrub, calling out her own addition. "Thou shalt not cut thy neighbor's slice of cake smaller than yours!"

"Stop the backrub! You're trying to distract me! It won't work! Bribery, this is enforced bribery! I wanna go to Crown Cafe!"

"Oh, just take your massage and be happy, meatball. We've had a long day and I don't want to go anywhere tonight. Look, you can borrow a volume of my manga, okay? And we can grab something to eat from my kitchen. It'll be fine."

"Oh, the scandal!" Usagi will struggle and send a glare over her shoulder at her captor. "What would the public say if they knew their beloved idol Sailor Mars was such a lazy layabout she can't even get up to eat a bacon cheeseburger! And bribery, on top of that! Mars is supposed to be the righteous one! Oh, the moral corruption! Make it two manga and we'll talk."

Rei will dig her hands in harder ("Ow ow ow Rei stop it stop it!") before turning to Minako. "What about you, you haven't weighed in. You think staying in is better too, don't you? It's getting dark soon anyway."

"Yeah, what do you want?" Usagi will turn on her warmest smile for Mina. "We have to eat _something_ or we'll die, right?"

Mina will reply with a shrug. "Maybe Usagi and me could just run and get takeout? If we transform and roofjump and don't get caught by the moonkitties, we could be back in..." She will stop, trailing off into silence, and her eyes will go wide. She will look around the room.

She will look at the girls in the room with her. Ami and Makoto, cleaning up the chess board. Rei, waiting for her response. Usagi, making jokes about the duplicitous laziness of Sailor Mars—not Rei Hino, shrine maiden and middle school student, but Sailor Mars and cheeseburgers in the same breath. And Minako will be in the middle of all these girls, casually planning to use her Sailor transformation—her duty, her curse—to make a late-evening fast food run.

She will feel sudden vertigo and almost fall but catch herself against the table, and when she looks up she will gasp. The girls will still be there, but for just a moment she will see them as they were ten thousand years ago in the Silver Millennium. Jupiter, running wild in the forests to meet the storm head-on, trusting in the strength of her thundering heart to guard all things precious. Mercury, traveling the land and seeking all knowledge, building up cities and havens in even the most desolate icy wastes with her skilled hands and the divine light of her mind. Mars, watching over the people from the marbled temples and taking the purifying flame to the field of battle, always forging an onward path with an upright soul. And the Princess Serenity, heir to the Moon, with the lunar light catching upon her brow in even the darkest night. Serenity, desiring to heal every hurt and celebrate every joy. Serenity, who gathers her friends about her and knows their hearts and souls and minds.

Minako isn't alone. She was never alone. She awoke first and fought on her own the longest, but that was only because her friends of eons had sent her first to prepare the way. They were there all along, just out of sight with smiles on their faces, waiting for her to join them once again.

And Minako, sitting in Rei's room stuck in a silly argument about dinner, will finally realize it.

Her breath will catch and her eyes water. Rei, still watching her with Usagi, will see it and be caught off guard. "Ah, Minako—are you... okay?"

"Sailor V is _dead!_" Everyone will cut off and shut up as Mina launches to her feet, hands thrown into the air. "_Long live Sailor Venus!"_

And then she will burst into great heaving sobs like she hasn't cried properly in years, her legs will give way and she'll sink to the ground. Rei, Ami, and Makoto will be shocked and wrong-footed as they start to ask what's wrong. Only Usagi will be smiling. Only Usagi will move close and gather Mina up in a hug, rocking back and forth as she holds Mina's head to her chest. Mina will try to get her voice back and make an excuse, but won't get any farther than choking out something about "When it rains, tears pour," which will make no sense to anyone except her as she thinks about the rainstorm that night on the London docks, though without the hollow restlessness those memories usually bring.

Usagi will lean down and put a gentle kiss in Mina's hair, and Mina will cling back with everything she has. "She's okay, everyone," Usagi will tell them as Mina bawls unashamed on her shoulder. "They're happy tears. She's okay."

It will take awhile and the memories and the fear and the nightmares will come back now and then for years, but Minako Aino will pull off her chains and escape Sailor V's head, stronger and older and wiser and just as irrepressible and crazy, and no matter how alone she once was, she will find her Princess and her comrades and never quite be truly alone again.)

(But not yet, because as she boards the plane to leave London and tell her parents all about the friends she did not actually make and the classes she did not actually attend, she is covering the hurt with a smiling mask, and her road still stretches for miles through the dark.)

(But still—one day. One day soon.)

* * *

OoOoO

_A/N: What is it with me and writing fics that I leave sitting on my hard drive for half a year? Anyway, I figured it was time I finished up and published a Sailor Moon fic in honor of Sailor Moon Crystal's premiere. Thank you for reading._


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